Payday loans face media backlash

Posted on February 17th, 2012 by Maya Nikolova in InfluenceAnalyser

In early January, UK media turned their spotlight onto a controversial advertising campaign by a payday loan provider. The campaign targeted students, informing them that “when your mates tell you about finding a deal on plane tickets to the Canary Islands, you’ve got some options. Maybe you don’t have the money to pay for the whole thing now, but you will when you get your wages at the end of the week. Enter, Wonga!” (The Guardian, 11 Jan 12)

As a result, the National Union of Students accused the short-term lender Wonga of “predatory” practices. Furthermore, Wonga was criticised for suggesting that its loans may have advantages over the official student loans, while failing to explain that the annual interest rate of their loan offer was actually over four thousand (4,214%).

Because of this story, here at Commetric we decided to take a deeper look in the media conversation around payday loans in UK media. Thus, we went back a couple of months to take an x-ray of the discussion.

First, we looked at the key brand attributes, or key words, used to describe payday loans and their providers. The result, displayed in the word cloud below, suggested a very negative media conversation, which cited “unsustainable loans”, debts that can quickly “snowball out of control” or could lead to “a spiral of debt”.  Payday loan providers were labelled “loan sharks” and accused of targeting “vulnerable” consumers.

Already knowing what the overall sentiment around payday loans would be, we wanted to answer three key questions:

  • Who were the main critics of payday loans?
  • Who were the supporters?
  • How did a company (or a whole industry for that matter) can handle such a PR challenge – to be accused of trying to seduce “vulnerable”, financially unstable students?

In order to find the answers, we decided to apply our patented influencer network analysis methodology. We looked at the most influential people taking part in the media conversation around payday loans and we also analysed their stance towards this type of financial service.

Payday Loans: Influencer to Publication Map (by Role)

This map shows all of the individual influencers (represented by circles) participating in the media discussion around payday loans over the last two months in UK print and online media.  It also identifies the publications writing about the issue (represented by squares) and who they are going to for comment. The different colours of the influencer nodes reflect what types of organisations they represent.

The media debate was shaped primarily by Interest Groups Representatives from charities such as Shelter (Campbell Rob), Consumer Credit Counselling Service (Una Farrel) or Money Advice Trust (Joana Elson). They criticised the high interest rates charged by payday loan providers and warned consumers not to turn to such short-term credits to cover mortgage costs or to spend a more lavish holiday season.

The National Union of Students’ Pete Mercer was also among the well-positioned Interest Groups Representatives, particularly because of his criticism of Wonga’s payday loans targeted at students.

The political angle was loudly spearheaded in the media by Stella Creasy (Lab MP Walthamstow). Her ‘End Legal Loan Sharking’ campaign and calls for interest rate caps captured media attention.

Consumers had a marginal media presence and shared negative experiences with payday loans.

Payday Loans: Influencer to Publication Map (by Stance)

This map shows the stance of individual influencers (represented by circles) towards payday loans or the payday loan industry as a whole. The colour of the influencer node reflects their favourability towards the topic.

This map clearly shows the overwhelming negativity towards payday loans, but could also be used to identify potential influencers that could be used to deliver more balanced messaging around the industry.

The CFA’s CEO John Lamidey was the most active voice to defend the loan sector to some extent. He noted that “If those that seek to protect consumers from extortionate credit truly have the best interests of consumers at heart, then seeking to claim that highly regulated, responsible short-term lenders are the same as loan sharks cannot possibly achieve this aim.” (The Independent, 07 Dec 11) However, his voice remained almost alone in the context of strong overall criticism.

The most vehement customer critic was Steve Perry who took out 64 loans from 12 different companies over 18 months. He said he “was crippled by the spiral of lending” (The Daily Mirror), authored the book “When Payday Loans Go Wrong” and has launched the website saynotopaydayloans.co.uk.

The lack of reference to positive payday loan customer experiences is reflective of the tone of the current UK media debate, but could offer future opportunity to publicise positive customer case studies.

The media outlets following this media conversation were mostly high-profile and with a national reach, which suggests the overall high interest in the payday loans debate. This underscores the need for a consistent and proactive media messaging and positioning if the industry wants to make its stand in this emotive discussion visible.

After analysing the key individual influencers, shaping the media conversation around payday loans, we decided to also screen for the most mentioned organisations in this context.

Just two payday loan providers, Wonga and Ferratum, appeared among the most mentioned organisations, which suggests that the criticism was universal towards the whole industry, and not solely focused on one company.

Wonga, expectedly, featured as a result of the negative story that it had been targeting students. Ferratum appeared in the media conversation on a more positive note: due to its announcement that it was expecting rapid growth in Britain in 2012.

Homeless charity Shelter was noted for its report according to which one million Britons have taken out payday loans to help pay their mortgage costs during 2011 and the Consumer Credit Counselling Service was listed among the organisations providing debt advice.

The Consumer Finance Association was the most pro-active organisation to defend the payday loan industry. However, it appeared in just 8% of coverage. CFA representatives commented mostly on the ongoing legislative debates in the UK and provided statistical data on short-term lending.

In conclusion, our x-ray study found that payday loan companies, and the wider industry, were on the back foot when it came to providing a robust PR response to the recent, high profile media debate around short term loans.

Lenders appeared to react ad-hoc to specific issues which arose, with no sustained voice to address ongoing criticism. Lenders’ limited media presence meant minimal control of the debate, which was driven primarily by critical consumer group representatives.

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Historical Share Prices Hint at Apple’s Future without Steve Jobs

Posted on October 7th, 2011 by Lora Petrova in EquityOptimiser, EquityPrioritiser

The news of Steve Jobs’s bereavement clearly shook the world on Wednesday. The man who has been an inspiration for so many and who made a career out of changing the way people use technology passed away  at the age of 56.

His pioneering spirit and business acumen have influenced to some extent the path of many tech companies, including that of Commetric.

Steve Jobs never designed a computer in his life, but it was his visionary and unmistakable business sense which drove Apple to stardom and his name became synonymous with that of his company. As his persona helped make Apple into one of the biggest companies on the planet, investors saw a massive pay off. The past ten years have been reasonably called the Steve Jobs decade, because Apple’s share price has risen 4,557% from its starting price of about $10 per share. Over the last five years alone, the company’s shares have risen 406.4% and follow a continuous upward trend as the graph below shows.

This is why Jobs’s untimely death has left many people wondering how Apple’s share price will fare in the short and long term. Here at Commetric, we are no exception. Unlike most people, however, we have tools that can help answer this question, using the unique approach of combining historical media coverage with our Equity Optimiser/Equity Prioritiser methodology. This allowed us to look at how various news reports on Apple impacted its share price and what were the topics that contributed to the biggest volatility.

The Equity Optimiser methodology  incorporates a series of tools that quantify the +/- impact of corporate news on a company’s share price as a guide to business strategy.

Our analysis focuses on how media reports affects Apple’s share price, ranking news topics by the absolute share price change associated with them, based on the coverage and share price movements of Apple Inc. relative to the S&P500. We used a 12-month period ending on 30 September 2011 and sourced articles from major business publications and newswires.

Next, we divided the days with coverage of
each topic into days with high levels of coverage and days with low level of coverage, based on the average normal news flow for the company over the analysed period.

Our proprietary technology has computed the absolute market-adjusted share price movement associated with the days with high and low coverage of each topic. This is then compared to the usual absolute adjusted share price movement of the company’s stock to indicate topics to which investors tend to be more sensitive.

Below are key topics that affected Apple’s share price movements:

As expected, the persona of Steve Jobs was mentioned the most (709 articles under the topic CEO mentioned), compared to the other topics we measure against. This topic brought 33 basis points volatility on average across the one-year period. Somewhat surprisingly, topics related to product launches or upgrades were not associated with any higher than usual volatility (e.g. Company plans/launches product did not bring any share price change in days with high media coverage compared to days with very low coverage).

What caught our attention were two distinct out-of-the-average values:

  • 41 basis points change in Apple’s share price when the article mentioned Steve Jobs’s health (161 articles under CEO health issues);
  • 71 basis points change in share price when there was a statement or quote of Steve Jobs in the article (104 articles under CEO statement).

To put things in perspective – a movement of 10 basis points of Apple’s shares is a gain or loss of $350 million in shareholder value.  In other words, on days when Jobs’s health was discussed, the impact was almost $1.5 billion and on days when he made a statement in the media, the number rose to the vicinity of $2.5 billion.

As a whole, this showed that the most violent market reactions were linked to the CEO-related topics, such as health issues and statements. Compared to the results of other big tech companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, this demonstrated undoubtedly that Apple’s share price volatility was directly tied to the persona of Steve Jobs to such a degree that the launch of a new iPhone had visibly less impact on the decisions investors make than a single quote by him.

Our initial question at hand was how Steve Jobs’s death would affect Apple Inc.’s share price in the future and how media coverage would impact investor activity on the company. Some 30 hours after the company announced the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. dropped by 1% and continues to be in a downtrend.  The company is due to report earnings on 17 October 2011, but the questions remain: will Apple overcome the big challenge of losing its iconic leader? Will the company manage to determine its new identity, effectively carrying on its former leader’s vision or will it reinvent itself and evolve beyond the CEO-is-the-company concept?

So far, here at Commetric we do not see any signs that caretaker CEO Tim Cook can reach the man-company iconic status that is in its own right capable of bringing such high share price volatility. Of course, it is still too soon to speculate on the issue. The results from our price impact matrix tool for the past 24 hours show the following picture:

CEO health issues and CEO leaves the company continue to be the two key topics that drive Apple Inc.’s share price movement. The share price movement when those issues are mentioned in media coverage so far is -1.76%, which is equal to $6,162 million in a day.

Of course, this is all in a day’s data, so no final conclusions can be made on whether Tim Cook will manage to single-handedly manipulate Apple’s share price the way his late predecessor did.  However, the historical data we have on Apple suggests that the next few months will certainly be quite an interesting and challenging period for everyone involved in the company, and for those watching on the sidelines.

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London Riots: The (Social) Medium IS the Message

Posted on August 11th, 2011 by Lora Petrova in InfluenceAnalyser

Europe’s trending topic these days is the massive social unrest that started in London but has been spreading like wildfire across all of the UK. On day four of the UK riots, here at Commetric we decided to take a close look at the events and how they affect businesses and brands in London’s boroughs.

We ran a search in the top ranked online UK publications for the past three days to source and analyse 2,600 articles. We categorised the sourced entities through our Influencer Network Analysis (INA) platform and analysed them using our patented methodology for INA. All entities were categorised by their role in the riots:

  • Affected by riots – events that might get cancelled due to the unrest, planned activities and the London Olympics 2012;
  • Communication channels/enablers – companies, brands, media, products used to spread information about meeting locations and planning strikes;
  • Government agencies – such as the Home Office;
  • Industry associations – also includes football associations, the Olympic committee; insurance associations, etc.
  • Riot victims – stores and businesses that had been looted or broken into;
  • Locations – all actual geographical locations across London, where looting has occurred.

Next, we generated a map co-citation maps in order to discover which of the above categories were mentioned together in articles.

Unsurprisingly the results showed that communication channels/enablers were most often mentioned together as tools for coordinating the riots. Rioters were reported to have used at least two communication channels together, such as Blackberry Messenger and Twitter, to talk to each other and spread information on the go. Although Blackberry was one of the most visible brands in the article sample, and despite all the headlines it made with its promise to cooperate with police, Twitter was the most widely reported communication channel. Riot victims most often mentioned included Tesco, Sony, JD Sports and the Westfield Shopping Centre. All four have been looted and/or set ablaze, with the attack on Tesco being most mentioned alongside Twitter.

A number of sports associations were also affected by the riots as football games were suspended and people debated the future of the London 2012 Olympics. Among the affected associations, the Football Association was the most central of all, connected mostly to the Premier League and Twitter.  The British Olympic Association and the International Olympic Committee were mostly mentioned together with the Home Office.

The Home Office itself was less connected, compared to the links between the communication channels. Interestingly, the Home Office was co-cited the most alongside Twitter and Blackberry, but not alongside riot victims or events and associations affected by the riots.

We also wanted to see which locations around London were mentioned most in articles together with the above categories.

Tottenham, Brixton, Croydon and Clapham were almost always mentioned together and were all linked to Twitter as it was reported that Twitter was used as a means to call  on people to be inspired by the scenes in Tottenham and rise up in their own neighbourhoods. Twitter was also used to remind people of the 1981 Brixton riots and call for similar approach.

Surprisingly, Brixton and Croydon were less often mentioned alongside the looted Tesco stores, which are located exactly there.

Tottenham was also often mentioned alongside the IPCC, due to its investigation into the police shooting of Mark Duggan there.

An interesting fact is that the International Olympic Committee did not appear in more than 10 articles together with rioting Olympic host boroughs such as Waltham Forest and Newham.

Amazon was mostly mentioned together with Tottenham in the articles, because reports linked the record sales of baseball bats and police batons on Amazon’s British website to the riots in the area of Tottenham.

Lastly, we wanted to see the connection between the communication channels/enablers and the riot victims.

Overall, the sample of 2,600 online news pieces demonstrated that the more traditional media outlets were very interested in the role that social media has played in organising and instigating the riots. This led to one interesting phenomenon – the enablers, such as Blackberry and Research in Motion and the Blackberry Messenger (BBM), were the most visible entities even compared to riot victims and ruined businesses. Taking a closer look at the articles we noticed something even more interesting – Research in Motion managed to successfully ride the media interest and boost its brand. While initially the BBM was strongly criticised and even blamed for the quick spread of the riots, the company later managed to clean up its name by announcing it would cooperate with the police. As a result, not only was Research In Motion one of the most central entities in the debate, but the features of its messenger were discussed at length, thus raising the brand awareness significantly.

What the riots in London demonstrated was that the ways in which social media is intertwined with everyday life is ever -increasing. We see more and more cases in which social media becomes the message and the focal point of traditional media news stories.

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The Murdochs and Rebekah Brooks Hearings: Who Said What

Posted on July 21st, 2011 by Lora Petrova in InfluenceAnalyser, MediaAnalyser

On Tuesday Murdoch father and son and  former CEO of News International Rebekah Brooks appeared in front of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee to give evidence on the phone hacking scandal that’s rocked the News Corp culture. The scandal also lead to the untimely closure of News of the World. Here at Commetric we took a closer look at the hearing from the perspective of the exact words all three of them used to answer the questions of the CMSSC and the CMSSC questions themselves.

We used the official transcripts, provided by the CMSSC to conduct our short study on the frequency of the words used in the two hearings. We counted the mentions of each word for the statements of Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks, and the committee questions for the separate hearings. We then removed from the picture all commonly used words such as articles, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections. Next, we merged the number of mentions of the same verb used in different tenses. We also merged pronouns. Last, we took the 30 most mentioned words for each of the five groups of statements in order to produce a visual explanation:

At one point during the hearing, the two Murdochs were asked what coaching they had received before showing up in front of the commission. “We were told to tell the truth, to be as open and as transparent as possible,” Murdoch Jr answered. Since at Commetric we deal with monitoring PR achievements of various companies, we recognised the hidden PR coaching behind that statement, while watching the hearings live on BBC. But despite the apologetic feeling that most listeners like us got, we found out that a mere half percent of the Murdoch-Brooks statements included the words apology/apologise/sorry.

Another thing that caught our attention was that Rupert Murdoch apparently did not know almost anything that was going on in News International, but an analysis of his talk showed that he used the phrases I don’t know/I am not aware/Not to my knowledge only in 2% during the hearing. On the other hand James Murdoch used the same phrases five times more often than his father and three times more often than Rebekah Brooks. What we also found was that the most used word in the Murdochs and Brooks statements was I/me/myself. While Murdoch father and son used a lot the we/us phrasing, Rebekah Brooks used the phrase five times less often. The conclusion is that while the Murdochs talked about “us” [we, the company], Brooks talked about I/me [did this, talked about that], which showed a greater level of her taking personal responsibility on the matter than her bosses.

Words like information/facts/data/transparency/evidence were visibly missing from the talk of all three of them. Another word that was sensitively underused was responsibility. Words and phrases such as corporate/company/business were abundant in James Murdoch’s statement, together with law/legal/in compliance with. Another interesting fact is that Rebekah Brooks mentioned News of the World more often that both Murdochs together, although questions of the committee about the newspaper mentioned it equally often in both hearings. She also spoke of the Milly Dowler case twice as often as her bosses.

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When Corporate Ethics are at Stake, Twitter Becomes a Key Consumer Weapon

Posted on July 8th, 2011 by Maya Nikolova in InfluenceAnalyser

Shortly before the announcement of News of the World’s sudden death as a result of a phone hacking scandal, here at Commetric we decided to see what the public, in the face of the Twitter community, had to say to brands and companies advertising in the world’s largest English-language newspaper.

We asked ourselves:

  • Did tweets target the brands that have been advertising with the newspaper?
  • Were Twitter users calling for action against brands which have not pulled advertising out of NotW?
  • If so, which were the most targeted brands/industries?
  • Who were the key opinion leaders within the Twitter community?

At 16:00 EET we sourced the most recent tweets mentioning the word “advertising” and the hashtags #newsoftheworld and #notw. We then applied our patented influencer network analysis methodology to get some answers.

Tweeters target Tesco

We sourced a total of 545 tweets posted in less than an hour– a clear sign that Twitter users had something to say about brands advertising in the maligned newspaper.

The brand that was most heavily targeted by Twitter users was definitely retail chain Tesco.

The tweets mentioning Tesco represented a staggering 65% of the bulk. Boosted by other retail chains named by tweeters, the retail industry became the main target of the push for companies to stop advertising in News of the World (78% of the tweets).

Share of tweets by industry

Telecom operators were the second most targeted industry, followed by the automotive industry and travel/leisure service providers.

Tesco, who attracted the biggest wave of civic responses, is the sole focus of Map 1. The map reveals all Twitter users who mentioned the retail chain. Tesco was one of the advertisers who formally announced they were not suspending their contract with NotW. The Twitter community reacted with outrage to this decision, which user @davidyorke called “shameful”. Many tweeters openly called for boycotting Tesco and switching to competitors like Sainsburry’s or Asda, who had already pulled advertising from the newspaper.

Although some of these tweets may be empty threats, it seems that users feel that retailers are the easiest to punish by just switching to the competition. This could be one of the reasons why this industry was the main target in tweeters’ calls to NotW advertisers.

Tesco’s own "twitterverse" of blame

Tesco’s own "twitterverse" of blame

Twitter users address brands directly

While Tesco did attract the most discontent, other brands weren’t spared either. The next map reveals all other companies mentioned more than twice in the analyzed tweets. Interestingly, most of the tweeters tended to discuss just one company of their choice. Those who did mention more than one brand mostly addressed companies from different industries. This suggests that twitter users acted on a personal level, addressing the companies that they had particular interest in.

The other companies targeted by tweeters

Twitter user @cliffordbarry was the most active in his calls to companies for pulling out advertising from NotW. His account seems to have been created especially for the purpose of naming and shaming those companies and in a total of 12 tweets in the sample, he linked to the largest number of brands and mentioned companies from all represented industries on the map save for the Energy Industry.

One of his tweets – “@GoneFairTrade, will you be reconsidering Cadbury’s advertising spend with #notw given that we know they hacked Milly Dowler’s phone?” – directed at  Cadbury Dairy Milk’s official Twitter account, demonstrates two of the key patterns of the Twitter users’ strategy in the calls to advertisers to turn away from NotW: Twitter users attempted to speak directly to the brands by addressing the official corporate Twitter accounts, and they also tended to highlight the ethical aspect of the scandal.

The two maps above reveal another crucial finding: this Twitter conversation really did equate Twitter users to the public and consumers. In many other Twitter studies we have seen a prevalence of automated Twitter accounts of news websites. Yet the participants in this conversation were primarily individuals, addressing an issue that they seem to care about.

Tweeters target direct competitors, praise Mitsubishi

Looking at the discussion from a different angle, we tried to see the patterns in praise and criticism. The map below focuses only on those tweeters who have mentioned at least two companies. In this case, colours do not indicate the industry, but the general attitude that the Twitter community had adopted towards each brand.

Criticism vs. praise

Notably, many users focused either only on praising the companies that had suspended advertising in NotW, or  on urging undecided companies to do so and criticising those who had already decided to stick with the newspaper.

Tweeters who mentioned both Tesco and Sainsbury’s represented an interesting bridge between the two groups: most of them threatened to abandon Tesco and switch to a chain that has decided to stop advertising in NotW.

Such types of messages were made even more powerful by the fact that they often juxtaposed direct competitors from the same industry. In a similar example, Mitsubishi, one of the first brands to announce the suspension of its ads, was among the most praised companies in the Twitter conversation. Many users chose to address other brands and urge them to follow Mitsubishi’s example. For instance, prior to Ford’s announcement that they have also discontinued ads in NotW, user @spoons27 addressed them: “Hi @forduk – Mitsubishi donated their saved #notw advertising spend to a children’s charity. Perhaps you’d like to do the same?”

Retweet champions: Labour MP and Guardian editor

Although the overall discussion included a total of 460 unique Twitter users, some names emerged as the key opinion leaders as they attracted a large number of retweets.

Retweet champions

Maybe expectedly, the retweets of disapproving tweets prevailed strongly, as the outrage at brands not taking what was perceived as the ethical action overpowered the satisfaction with brands that had done so.

The most influential tweeter in the discussion was, unsurprisingly, a prominent public figure as well – Labour MP Chris Bryant (@ChrisBryantMP; +7,400 followers). His tweet “Just decided I’m not doing my weekly shop in tesco this evening following their decision to continue advertising with #NOTW” received 172 retweets within our sample only.

The second most retweeted statement was, again, made by a prominent user and concerned Tesco: “So Tesco apparently NOT pulling advertising from #NotW. Wonder how people will feel about that.” Its author, Jonathan Haynes (@JonathanHaynes; +6,400 followers), the web night editor for The Guardian, attracted 9 retweets in less than an hour.

As pretty much any other Twitter conversation we have studied, this one also featured a number of cutting comments – once again proving that irony and satire are among the key characteristics of Twitters’ idiom. A couple of our favourites included:

@cliffsull: Anyone want to get CHEAP advertising in a major Sunday Paper? (we appear to have a few openings) #NOTW

@OllyDeed: I’m officially announcing that I’m withdrawing my advertising in the lonely hearts section of the #NOTW #takethatmurdoch

Why brands need to listen and react fast

Despite the suspension of the newspaper and the announcement that this Sunday’s  last issue of News of the World is not going to feature any advertisement, the outrage in the public who called on brands to do what their own consumers believe is ethical, would perhaps leave a bitter taste.

Why bitter? Because some major brands did not listen to their customers. Because they did not respond to their calls. Because, in a digital age when a message travels the world in seconds, they were simply too late.

As our small-scale Twitter study showed, in the age of social media no brand and no industry can hide away from the public. The consumers can address brands directly. The consumers demand that companies have ethical standards. And consumers threaten to abandon any brand if it fails to meet those standards.

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The Cannes Lions Media Conversations: Day 5

Posted on June 24th, 2011 by Maya Nikolova in InfluenceAnalyser

Commetric started listening to the media debate on the 2011 Cannes Lions festival. For the duration of the festival (20-24 June 2011) we are monitoring all media channels – from mainstream to social – to help visualize the connexions between topics, central individuals/Twitter Users and organizations mentioned in relation to the creativity festival.

Cannes Lions is all about creativity and creative connexions. You can follow the Cannes Lions media dynamics by day on our Cannes Connexions site: http://bit.ly/l4IQ28. This site allows you to visualise these connexions and see who is leading the Cannesversation across social and traditional media.

Key Highlights 24 June 2011 – Day 5:

Twitter User Presence Skyrockets

  • Yesterday’s top three Twitter users continued to bask in the limelight and even managed to generate an increased social media presence on Day 5 of Cannes Lions – dannydevriendt (Danny Devriendt), princess_misia (Marta Majewska) and JasonXenopoulos (Jason Xenopoulos).
  • Notably, Danny Devriendt’s tweets increased by a staggering 73%.
  • Twitter users focused intensively on seminars and presentations held at the festival, with some highlights coming from BMW’s launch of its first electric car.

The Ovation Goes Tooooo…Sir Ken Robinson

  • Amidst the many presentations on Day 5, the spotlight came down on one of the fiercest defenders of creative talent Ogilvy & Mather’s Ken Robinson. His talk on leading a culture of innovation sparked positive Twitter comments among attendees: “I’ve heard more wisdom in the past hour than in the past year” (David Trewern).
  • Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B)’s Rob Reilly was another favourite, who discussed his creative mantra “Delusional positivity.” He also gave tips on how best to give a pitch presentation citing rules such as “Don’t bring anyone to the meeting, who you haven’t had too much beer with” or “Bring enough execution ideas.”
  • Twitter users continued to tweet about Google’s new advertising strategy and Eric Schmidt’s talk about the future of NFC terminals.

Wave the Flag of Success: Gold, Silver and Bronze

  • On Day 5, the Cannes Lions coverage in the blogosphere, online and print media focused on competition winners and yesterday’s announcements by Leo Burnett and Google.
  • Among the prominent winners were Ogilvy & Mather, Ketchum, IKEA and BBDO. Media also noted some of Asia’s top winners such as South Korea’s Cheil Worldwide and India’s JWT. Many companies were also merely mentioned as having been shortlisted, without actually securing any wins at the festival.
  • Articles on participants at Cannes Lions were published by a few advertising-orientated publications. They often mentioned several festival participants at a time, accounting for the almost even focus on companies.
  • Microsoft presented a new advertising option through Kinect, “the hottest selling gadget,” that will be used by the company to serve social and interactive ads on the Xbox platform.

To view the interactive maps of Day 5, follow this link.

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The Cannes Lions Media Conversations: Day 4

Posted on June 23rd, 2011 by Maya Nikolova in InfluenceAnalyser

Commetric started listening to the media debate on the 2011 Cannes Lions festival. For the duration of the festival (20-24 June 2011) we are monitoring all media channels – from mainstream to social – to help visualize the connexions between topics, central individuals/Twitter Users and organizations mentioned in relation to the creativity festival.

Cannes Lions is all about creativity and creative connexions. You can follow the Cannes Lions media dynamics by day on our Cannes Connexions site: http://bit.ly/l4IQ28. This site allows you to visualise these connexions and see who is leading the Cannesversation across social and traditional media.

Key Highlights 23 June 2011 – Day 4:

Twitter Talk Fires Up

  • Three Twitter users with an already established voice continued tweeting unswervingly for the fourth consecutive day of Cannes Lions – dannydevriendt (Danny Devriendt), princess_misia (Marta Majewska) and JasonXenopoulos (Jason Xenopoulos).
  • Both Danny Devriendt and Marta Majewska are representatives of PR firm Porter Novelli, and tweeted on similar topics/events.
  • Twitter users showed significantly more interest in the panels and panel participants, rather than the names of organizations winning the Lions. This suggests that the top Twitter users are more interested in the thought leadership aspect of the Cannes Lions festival than in the competition wins themselves.

Google’s Eric Schmidt is the Man of the Hour

  • Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, honoured as the 2011 Media Person of the Year, was the most central figure on Day 4. His Try to Say Yes philosophy and Google’s new invention, the self driving car, were among Twitter users’ favourite topics.
  • Author and innovator Edward de Bono, another prolific panel participant, also received a lot of Twitter visibility with statements such as “Our biggest problem is NOT climate change. It is poor thinking.”
  • Twitter users also gravitated to topics such as Facebook’s strategy to make advertising social, as well as Leo Burnett’s notion of populism being “the new effectiveness.”

The Scramble for the Online Advertising Industry Begins

  • On day 4, the Cannes Lions coverage in the blogosphere, online and print media encompassed high-profile announcements rather than news about competition winners.
  • Among the eye grabbing announcements was Facebook’s new ad unit, created by Leo Burnett, that would alter the way brands and people interact.
  • In an attempt to rival Facebook, Google announced they will buy more companies to boost their presence in the growing online display ad sector. Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google, gained prominence by discussing not only Google’s strategy but also several industry predictions such as the near future of commercial mobile wallet systems.
  • Coverage of competition winners while minor still captured attention – particularly Cheil Worldwide’s entry ‘Homeplus Subway Virtual Store’ for Tesco and Digital Kitchen’s campaign for the new Cosmopolitan Hotel launch in Las Vegas.

To view the interactive maps of Day 4, follow this link.

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The Cannes Lions Media Conversations: Day 3

Posted on June 22nd, 2011 by Maya Nikolova in InfluenceAnalyser

Commetric started listening to the media debate on the 2011 Cannes Lions festival. For the duration of the festival (20-24 June 2011) we are monitoring all media channels – from mainstream to social – to help visualize the connexions between topics, central individuals/Twitter Users and organizations mentioned in relation to the creativity festival.

Cannes Lions is all about creativity and creative connexions. You can follow the Cannes Lions media dynamics by day on our Cannes Connexions site: http://bit.ly/l4IQ28. This site allows you to visualise these connexions and see who is leading the Cannesversation across social and traditional media.

Key Highlights from Day 3 (22 June 2011) included:

Twitter Cannesversation Boiling

The Yahoo Panel with Robert Redford in the Spotlight

  • Hollywood actor and director Robert Redford, who is also the founder of the Sundance Institute, was the most mentioned individual by the top Twitter users in the Cannes Lions conversation. Accordingly, Yahoo was the most mentioned organization, as it hosted the panel discussion with Redford.
  • Yesterday’s most prominently tweeted name – Malcolm Gladwell, remained in the spotlight, yet naturally he was more marginal than on the day he appeared at the event.
  • Most of the top Twitter users mentioned individuals and organizations which remained out of the scope of interest of the other top tweeters, revealing the different sub-conversations in the bigger Cannes Lions conversation.

Winners and Participants Drive Coverage in Print, Online Media and Blogosphere

  • Expectedly, the Cannes Lions coverage in print publications, online media and the blogosphere was driven by the announced competition winners and participants of the different panels. Some of the most widely commented winners were members of the BBDO family such as BBDO India and Clemenger BBDO Melbourne. Droga 5 was less prominent in the overall discussion, yet it received a lot of positive reactions by journalists and bloggers for the Jay-Z Decoded campaign, which won the Outdoor Grand Prix.
  • In line with Day 2, press releases again occupied a significant share of the coverage in online media.
  • Similarly to the Cannes Lions conversation in Twitter, the print and online media also focused on the Yahoo panel. One of the most heavily reproduced press releases covered Yahoo’s upcoming sponsorship of the short film programme at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. This was announced by Yahoo’s executive VP Ross Levinsohn, who hosted the on-stage discussion with Robert Redford.
  • Although general audience print and online publications did participate in the Cannes Lions conversation, the topic remained mostly in the scope of the specialized advertising, marketing and PR media.

To view the interactive maps of Day 3, follow this link.

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The Cannes Lions Media Conversations: Day 2

Posted on June 21st, 2011 by Maya Nikolova in InfluenceAnalyser

Commetric started listening to the media debate on the 2011 Cannes Lions festival. For the duration of the festival (20-24 June 2011) we are monitoring all media channels – from mainstream to social – to help visualize the connexions between topics, central individuals/Twitter Users and organizations mentioned in relation to the creativity festival.

Cannes Lions is all about creativity and creative connexions. You can follow the Cannes Lions media dynamics by day on our Cannes Connexions site: http://bit.ly/l4IQ28. This site allows you to visualise these connexions and see who is leading the Cannesversation across social and traditional media.

Key Highlights from Day 2 (21 June 2011) included:

Twitter Conversation Intensifies

  • The Cannes Lions conversation in Twitter visibly intensified on the second day of the festival. The ten most active Tweeters produced three times more tweets than the most active from yesterday.
  • Three Twitter users maintained their level of activity and were again amongst the top 10 most prolific tweeters– dannydevriendt (Danny Devriendt), _MELOW (Just Mels) and advertisingweek (Advertising Week).
  • The number of individuals and organisations mentioned by the top Twitter users also increased since yesterday, suggesting a more intense and diverse discussion as the event warms up.

Gladwell and Huffington Take Over

  • Yesterday’s leading influencer – teenage pop star Nick Jonas – disappeared as a topic of interest for the top Cannes Lions tweeters.
  • The most central influencers in the Twitter discussion on Day 2 were instead speakers from various panels. The spotlight belonged to best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell, whose speech was often retweeted by top Twitter users.
  • Although Arianna Huffington’s own Twitter account did not make it among the top Cannes Lions tweets of the day, she earned a prominent position in the discussion, talking about online content together with AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong. Tweeters seemed to enjoy Huffington’s metaphor “Authenticity is like pornography, you know it when you see it.”

Press Releases Shape Print and Online Media Coverage

  • The Cannes Lions conversation in print and online media was heavily influenced by press releases, re-published particularly in online outlets. The two most  frequently reprinted press releases were each on new studies: the BBDO/Microsoft global advertising study and the AOL/IPG Media Lab research on digital branding, both presented at Cannes Lions.

Winners in the Spotlight

  • On the second day of the festival, news on competition winners grew. The eyes of the media turned to the winner of the Grand Prix for PR – Australian ad agency Clemenger BBDO for the “Break Up” campaign for National Australia Bank.

To view the interactive maps of Day 2, follow this link.

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Commetric Dives in Cannes Lions Media Conversations with Cannes Connexions

Posted on June 20th, 2011 by Maya Nikolova in Announcements, InfluenceAnalyser

Commetric started listening to the media debate on the 2011 Cannes Lions festival. For the duration of the festival (20-24 June 2011) we are monitoring all media channels – from mainstream to social – to help visualize the connexions between topics, central individuals/Twitter Users and organizations mentioned in relation to the creativity festival.

Cannes Lions is all about creativity and creative connexions. You can follow the Cannes Lions media dynamics by day on our Cannes Connexions site: http://bit.ly/l4IQ28

This site allows you to visualise these connexions and see who is leading the Cannesversation across social and traditional media.

Key Highlights from Day 1 (20 June 2011) included:

Nick Jonas Takes Center Stage in Twitter

  • The majority of the most active Twitter users tweeting on the festival had their eyes on teenage superstar Nick Jonas of The Jonas Brothers. His Twitter fan base consisted mostly of users with aliases including the name Jonas. They tweeted about the young musician’s participation at the imc2 conference, posted links to pictures of him or commented on whether he drank on the AOL party he attended.

Lego crowdsourced pilot building profile

  • From all organizations, mentioned in the Twitter conversation on Cannes Lions, toy manufacturer Lego received most attention. Two of the most active Twitter users – dannydevriendt (Danny Devriendt) and princess_misia (Marta Majewska) –commented on Lego’s global pilot of a crowdsourced product and marketing effort, announced Sunday at Cannes Lions.

No Brand Dominated Print/Blogosphere Conversation

  • The Cannes Lions conversation in across blogs and industry print showed no dominating brand, perhaps because journalists and bloggers are still waiting for the winners to be announced.
  • All media channels touched upon the topic of competition and panel participants. This topic also received significant media attention due to Nick Jonas’s strong Twitter fan base. Interestingly, the conversation on competition winners remained solely in the domain of print media and blogs, as the most active Twitter users did not seem as interested in awards such as Media Person of the year or Advertiser of the Year.

Failing Wi-Fi causing problems on Day 1

  • While many Twitter users didn’t mention any agency or brand, many tweeted on the event they are or will be attending and some outspoken twitterers complained about the failing Wi-Fi signal of the first day of Cannes Lions.

To view the interactive maps of Day 1, follow this link.

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